DSS News is a free biweekly newsletter from DSSResources.COM
about computerized Decision Support Systems.
***********************************************************
DSS News
D. J. Power, Editor
October 9, 2005 -- Vol. 6, No. 22
A Free Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM
1,250 Subscribers
************************************************************
Check the case by Jeff Forrest
"The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster"
************************************************************
Featured:
* Ask Dan! What is the history of DSSResources.com?
* DSS Conferences
* What's New?
* DSS News Releases
************************************************************
Visit DSSResources.com; Support our advertisers
Advertise here!
************************************************************
What is the history of DSSResources.com?
by Dan Power
Many readers know that my "day job" is teaching Information Systems
and Business Planning at the University of Northern Iowa. In the early
1990s, I served as Head of the UNI Management Department and Director
of its Information Systems Research Lab (ISRL). During that period,
with financial help from the UNI College of Business Administration,
donations from a group of Iowa bankers, and grants from Apple Computer
and IBM, I was able to purchase some Macintosh computers, printers and
an IBM RISC 6000. The lab and our new business building had ethernet
connections and the University of Northern Iowa had an Internet
connection through the Iowa Communications Network. By 1994 we were
surfing the Web and the ISRL had a Web server. In summer 1995, I
started accumulating a bookmark list of DSS-related web sites. Also,
at about that time I started operating a Web server on a Macintosh
IIci in my office. The first Web page I published was my DSS bookmark
list.
So DSSResources.com started during summer 1995 as a way of organizing
the vast amounts of information on decision support systems found
during Webcrawler and Alta Vista searches for DSS-related web
sites. As my knowledge of HTML and other Web technologies of the time
increased, I started creating other DSS pages. The Web site URL was
power.cba.uni.edu running a Quarterdeck WebStar server. The first Web
log starts on October 2, 1995. From then until January 1, 1997, the
DSS Research Resources web site transmitted more than 300,000 files to
visitors from more than 50 countries.
A related resource, the ISWorld DSS Research page was created and
submitted to ISWorld on November 29, 1995 by myself, Dan Power, as
Editor with Hemant Bhargava and Freddie Quek as co-editors. That page
was peer reviewed and accepted for inclusion in ISWorld on September
5, 1996. The page was subsequently included in the ISWorld Hall of
Fame. In 1998, the DSS Research page was identified as an ISWorld Top
Resource. The ISWorld DSS Research and Teaching pages are now managed
by the AIS SIG DSS Resources chair.
From January 16, 1996 to July 31, 1996, I served as Acting Dean of the
College of Business Administration at the University of Northern Iowa
and my Web server moved with me to the Dean's office. During that
period the site was little more than a popular bookmark list. My
Macintosh had passed its prime so I applied for funding for a Sun
Sparc 4 workstation. Receiving the funding was in retrospect a mixed
blessing. Most of my Fall 1996 sabbatical was spent conducting
research on decision support systems and learning Sun Solaris Unix and
the nuances of the Netscape Commerce server software.
In Fall of 1995, Bhargava, Quek and I proposed a workshop on DSS and
Web Technologies at the International Federation for Information
Processing Working Group 8.3 (IFIP WG 8.3) conference, "Implementing
Systems for Supporting Management Decisions: Concepts, Methods, and
Experiences" to be held in London, UK, July 21-24, 1996. In June
1996, I prepared version 1 of the DSS Web Tour for presentation at
that workshop.
By January 1997, DSS Research Resources had more than 40 Web pages
including: DSS Books (Power and Gray); DSS Companies; DSS Glossary;
DSS Researchers Directory; DSS Spreadsheet Links; DSS Web Tour;
DW/OLAP page; General DSS Related WWW Links; Top 5! DSS web sites;
University DSS Links; and Web DSS Demos. Also, by January 1997, the
DSS Research Resources home page had received more than 12,000 visitors.
Approximately, 20% of the visitors had been at nodes located at
U.S. Universities and more than 30% of the visitors had been at nodes
of U.S. and multinational companies including Bell Atlantic, Cray
Research, Chevron, Duke Power, Dupont, Hewlett Packard, IBM
Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Polaroid, Sony and Xerox.
The 1996-1999 What's New page at
http://dssresources.com/whatsnew/whatsnew96-99.html chronicles
approximately 100 major changes to the Web site over a 36 month
period. As I was learning about Web technologies, I was also teaching
my students about the Web and about Decision Support Systems. My Web
work had a positive synergy with my teaching and research.
The Web is ever changing and to keep up, in Spring 1998 the page
design was updated and the name of the site and logo was changed
to DSS Resources. Also, the domain name DSSResources.com was
registered with Internic. In late 1998 and early January 1999, DSS
Resources moved to a second generation design with a new logo and
format. The revised DSS Resources home page was posted January 15,
1999. By January 1999, it was evident that DSS Resources needed an
injection of funds for new hardware and funds for operations. A
University environment is a great incubator for experimentation, but
in 1999 University rules precluded having an independent domain on a
UNI Web server, subscriptions and soliciting advertising. Budgets
were tight and the only alternative seemed to be starting a small Web
publishing business. So that's what my wife Carol and I did. With
the help of my son Alex, we activated the DSSResources.COM web site on
September 28, 1999. Rather than operating our own Web server, we
outsourced our hosting to Verio. Over the past six years we have
outsourced and partnered with a number of companies for various
services.
The first issue of DSS News was published May 10, 2000.
Interested readers can find other major milestones by checking
the What's New? pages at http://dssresources.com/whatsnew/index.html .
DSSResources.COM (Decision Support Systems Resources) is a web-based
knowledge repository. The mission "is to help people who are
interested in learning about how to use information technologies and
software to improve decision making. The target audience is
Information Systems professionals, students, managers interested in
MIS and academics in MIS/DSS." DSSResources.COM is still needed
because Decision Support technology is evolving very rapidly. Despite
the proliferation of content on the Web about computerized decision
support, IT managers, IS/T students and IS/T academics face a
difficult challenge staying up-to-date about these changes.
DSSResources.COM still serves a need and I enjoy working at the
interface between my colleagues who are building "real world" DSS and
those who are studying such systems and teaching the next generation
of practitioners about computerized decision support.
In the coming months, we are hoping to do some exciting things to make
DSSResources.COM even more useful. First, I want to publish version 2
of the DSS Hyperbook and expand the technical content. Second, I am
continually working on new content pages and your suggestions are most
welcome. The current development direction is to add pages on specific
decision-making tasks like business activity monitoring and on
specific decision support tools like multidimensional analysis and
simulation. Third, we are working to generate additional revenue to
maintain and enhance DSSResources.COM and our related sites
PlanningSkills.com and DecisionAutomation.com. We also want to
maintain DSS News as a free service to the DSS community.
Although the current expenses are much less than for many other
content web sites and ad revenues are reasonably stable, we need to
increase our revenues to support travel, hire more part-time help,
purchase hardware and software, and fund research projects and field
case studies. Our goal is to show a modest positive cash flow every
year. The more revenue we generate, the more we can do to stimulate
knowledge creation and dissemination about computerized decision
support systems.
I'm often asked "do you accept articles, case studies and press
releases? Do you need field study sites?" The answer is YES. Please
suggest content to feature at our site. DSSResources.com is intended
as an edited, knowledge repository. We also partner with other
organizations to promote the use and understanding of computerized
decision support systems. Send us your partnership proposals.
So for more than 10 years, my goal has been to provide an outstanding
resource about computerized Decision Support Systems on the World Wide
Web. Your favorable feedback and my interest in DSS has made editing
and maintaining DSSResources.COM fun and enjoyable.
We trace our first Web site to October 2, 1995. DSSResources.com
started operation as a commercial venture on September 28, 1999. Help
us celebrate our anniversaries!
************************************************************
Purchase Dan Power's DSS FAQ book
83 frequently asked questions about computerized DSS
http://dssresources.com/dssbookstore/power2005.html
************************************************************
DSS Conferences
1. 2005 NPRA Plant Automation and Decision Support
Conference, October 18-21, 2005, Gaylord Texan Hotel,
Grapevine, Texas. Check npra.org .
2. Community Planning Collaborative (CPC) National Summit,
October 27-30, 2005, Orlando, FLorida.
Check planningcollaborative.org .
3. ACM 8th International Workshop on Data Warehousing and
OLAP (DOLAP 2005), November 4-5, 2005, Bremen, Germany.
Check http://gplsi.dlsi.ua.es/congresos/dolap05/ .
4. Water Management Decision-Support Software Workshop
November 16 - 17, 2005 - Niagara Falls, New York, USA,
Check http://www.ceatech.ca/eventsd.php?eid=1027.
Abstracts due August 26, 2005.
5. Third Annual Pre-ICIS Workshop on Decision Support
Systems sponsored by AIS SIG DSS, December 11, 2005, Las Vegas,
Nevada. Workshop URL: mis.temple.edu/sigdss/icis05 .
6. ISCRAM2006, the Third International Conference on Information
Systems for Crisis Response and Management, Newark, New Jersey, USA,
at the New Jersey Institute of Technology from May 14-17 2006.
Check http://www.iscram.org .
7. Call for Papers: International Conference on Creativity and
Innovation in Decision Making and Decision Support (CIDMDS 2006)
sponsored by IFIP WG 8.3, June 28th - July 1st 2006, London,
UK. Check http://www.ifip-dss.org/ .
************************************************************
Call for Nominations: AIS SIG DSS Award for Best Journal
Article 2005, nominations due March 15, 2006.
Check http://dssresources.com/news/1063.php .
************************************************************
What's New at DSSResources.COM
10/07/2005 Posted case by Jeff Forrest, "The Space Shuttle
Challenger Disaster: A failure in decision support system and
human factors management". Check the cases page.
************************************************************
Please tell your DSS friends about DSSResources.COM
************************************************************
DSS News Releases - September 24 to October 7, 2005
Read them at DSSResources.COM and search the DSS News Archive
10/06/2005 Bank of America expands Teradata(R) data warehouse system.
10/06/2005 Business Objects positioned in the Leader Quadrant in Basel
II Risk Management Magic Quadrant.
10/05/2005 Call for Nominations: AIS SIG DSS Award for Best Journal
Article 2005, nominations due March 15, 2006.
10/05/2005 Call for Papers: CIDMDS 2006, London School of Economics,
London, UK, June 28 ? July 1, 2006.
10/05/2005 Leading retailer grows Teradata-enabled business
intelligence capabilities.
10/04/2005 Sun and Google expand technology reach and global
opportunity.
10/04/2005 SGI Altix Servers and Supercomputers provide core
technology for Australia's APAC Grid.
10/04/2005 Woodbine sees Novell and Linux as sure bet for secure,
reliable collaboration.
10/03/2005 ADVIZOR Solutions releases an 'Industry First' BI offering.
10/03/2005 World's largest data mining conference showcases new
trends, theories, best practices.
10/03/2005 Business Objects ushers in new era of business intelligence
with launch of BusinessObjects Intelligent Question.
09/30/2005 Battle Command Sustainment Support System wins 'Best
Military Logistics Program Award'.
09/29/2005 Teradata® Warehouse selected for advanced data management
program at Ohio's Wright Center of Innovation.
09/29/2005 RelocationCentral launches first nationwide apartment
search site using new web technologies.
09/29/2005 Panorama Software continues to demonstrate business
intelligence leadership on the Microsoft platform.
09/29/2005 Motorola calls for Congressional action to improve and
secure nation's first responders communications network.
09/29/2005 EMC drives content management standardization through joint
effort with Adobe.
09/28/2005 Computerworld names recipients of `Best Practices in
Business Intelligence' awards.
09/28/2005 DM Review announces winners in the 2005 World Class
Solution Awards competition.
09/28/2005 Denver Water taps into Applix TM1 for business performance
management.
09/28/2005 EMC simplifies e-mail storage management for Microsoft
Exchange Server.
09/28/2005 Global Positioning System navigation shows greatest
potential as next "breakout" wireless handset application for
Americans, according to new Ipsos survey.
09/27/2005 FAST selected by FirstGov.gov to bring enterprise search
functionality to content management.
09/27/2005 Sun introduces new version of StarOffice(TM) software.
09/27/2005 ProClarity launches global beta program in support of
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Release.
09/27/2005 CollabraSpace enhances BEA's Employee Self-Service portal
with collaborative functionality.
09/27/2005 Information Builders' customers achieve significant ROI
from operational BI implementations.
09/27/2005 Supply Chain Consultants introduces powerful forecasting
software to enhance collaboration.
09/26/2005 COPLINK(R) adds powerful new INTEL LEAD(R) module to its
crime fighting and intelligence solution suite.
09/26/2005 Coca-Cola HBC to deploy more than 6,000 Symbol MC9000
mobile computers for real-time enterprise mobility.
09/26/2005 First modernized GPS Satellite built by Lockheed Martin
launched successfully by the U.S. Air Force.
************************************************************
DSS News is copyrighted (c) 2005 by D. J. Power. Please send your
questions to daniel.power@dssresources.com.